Brad Keselowski, a native of Rochester Hills, has six top-five finishes in 14 races this season. He finished second at Pocono last week.
DAVE MARR -- DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA

BROOKLYN, MICH. >> Brad Keselowski wants to be the homecoming king.

Michigan International Speedway is his Daytona, and Sunday’s Quicken Loans 400 his Super Bowl.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know,” the Rochester Hills native said when asked what winning a NASCAR Sprint Cup race at his home track would mean.

“I can only imagine what it would mean to me. I can tell you it wouldn’t be like any other win.”

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Keselowski has achieved more than perhaps even he could have imagined since Dale Earnhardt Jr., impressed by Keselowski’s performance in a NASCAR truck race a handful of years ago, hired him to race for Junior’s team in the NASCAR Nationwide Series.

Keselowski won the Nationwide championship in 2010. He has won 11 Cup races. He has won a Cup championship, something the likes of established stars Earnhardt Jr., Carl Edwards and Kevin Harvick cannot claim.

But in nine Cup starts at MIS, the track that sits a two-hour drive from his home, the place where Keselowski first envisioned becoming a big-time racer, the 2012 Cup champion has never won.

“I look at that race … driving through the area and all the memories that pop up, there’s deep, deep emotional ties to running there,” he said.

“When you run well somewhere that you’ve had such emotional ties to, it really hits home in your stomach.”

Keselowski, who won Nationwide races at MIS in 2009 and 2010, is in good position to end his Cup drought.

One of nine drivers to exceed 202 mph in qualifying, Keselowski arrived at MIS fifth in points after finishing second in the last two Cup races.

A week ago, the Penske Racing driver led 95 laps before finishing second to Earnhardt Jr. at Pocono.

“I’m really, really happy about where we’re at as a team,” Keselowski said.

Rarely conventional or bashful, and often calculating with his words, Keselowski was his usual quote-able self after qualifying at MIS.

Asked about the Canadian engineers working on his race team, he said, “It’s probably a larger story that the American engineering pool is very shallow right now.

“It’s just very hard to get engineers with the educational background and commitment that we need to be successful at this level from the United States.

“There’s certainly a shortage, not just at Penske but throughout the garage.”

And he chimed in as speed was again a story at MIS.

The track that has produced one record qualifying lap after another since it was repaved three years ago yielded more eye-popping times.

Kevin Harvick won the pole position for Sunday’s race when his No. 4 Chevrolet zipped around the 2-mile track in 35.198 seconds, or 204.557 mph.

That was the fastest NASCAR pole speed since Bill Elliott went 212.809 at Talladega in 1987.

“The speeds are up because the cars are comfortable,” Keselowski said. “The two are connected.

“We’re certainly pushing the edges of every facet of the car, the track (and) the sport with those increased speeds, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Keselowski turned 30 in February. He has won more than $35 million in Cup races.

“I feel solidified in the sport as a competitor, but also in some ways as a personality, which is interesting,” he said. “I’m probably a little more mature in some ways that are good and some ways that are bad, but I still have the same fire, the same drive and desire to win races and to win another championship.”

He’d like nothing more than to underscore those points with a winner’s burnout at MIS.

“It kind of gives me goose bumps knowing that we have an opportunity to, one, run for another championship and, two, win a big Cup race at my home track,” he said.